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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23487868">Stealing the Sky</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShayLaLaLooHoo/pseuds/ShayLaLaLooHoo'>ShayLaLaLooHoo</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure (Cartoon), Tangled (2010)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>AU, Alternate Universe, Eugene and Cassandra and Lance are Siblings (Disney), Found Families, Moon Powers Varian (Disney), Moon!Varian, Rapunzel and Varian are Siblings (Disney), like that's the entire premise</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 09:00:02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,678</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23487868</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShayLaLaLooHoo/pseuds/ShayLaLaLooHoo</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A reimagined opening to <i>Tangled:</i><br/>Flynn Rider has just pulled off the heist of the century—stealing the crown of the Lost Princess of Corona—with the help of his favorite partners-in-crime, Lance Strongbow and Eden Sparrow. However, when they get separated during their great escape, Eden finds that Flynn has gotten them into more trouble than anticipated.<br/>AKA, this is mostly an excuse to have a big found family AU: Rapunzel and Varian are siblings, and Cass will never admit how much she cares about her stupid brothers.<br/>Sorry about the title.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Cassandra &amp; Eugene Fitzherbert | Flynn Rider (Disney), Cassandra &amp; Lance Strongbow, Eugene Fitzherbert | Flynn Rider &amp; Lance Strongbow, Rapunzel &amp; Varian (Disney)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>40</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>182</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Stealing the Sky</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I haven't written fanfic in a while, but I couldn't resist playing with these characters. But I decided to actually upload this because everyone I've interacted with in this fandom has been so, so sweet! This is a mashup of like, every common AU out there: found family, Moon!Varian, role swap, etc. </p><p>Eden Sparrow is Cass's pseudonym.<br/>Also, Eugene doesn't betray them like he betrayed the Stabbingtons, because that's his FAMILY, thank you, and they're the dream team. (Also, I don't know why no one's made all three of these guys siblings before)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Couldn’t have resisted, could you, Rider?” Eden shouted. “You just had to be cute!”</p><p>Flynn Rider’s laughter echoed behind the three thieves, following their weaving and winding paths between the trees and shrubbery. Lance Strongbow led them down a path with thick coverage, being hardy and strong enough to fight through the branches, but Eden Sparrow was the most dexterous, being the smallest of the bunch. Her breath control was the best, too, considering that she’d been able to yell at Flynn when Lance was already panting.</p><p>They slowed in a quiet area, de-elevated from the rest of the forest, and, stopped to rest, now confident that they’d left the guards behind for a moment. Lance braced his hands on his knees, sweat shining on his bald, ochre head, as Flynn leaned against the tree. Eden pushed back her bobbed hair and scanned the surrounding forest with narrowed hazel-grey eyes.</p><p>“Okay, boys, I think—”</p><p>Flynn gasped, cutting her off. She tensed.</p><p>“Oh no,” he uttered and ripped a poster off the tree, “No, no, this is bad, this is very, <em>very </em>bad, this is <em>really </em>bad!”</p><p>Eden glanced at Lance, her fingers itching for her dagger and ready to fight, but he just looked amused.</p><p>Flynn turned the paper, showing off a finely etched resemblance of his face. Well, it resembled him fine, for the most part.</p><p>She sagged, half relieved and half frustrated. “Rider, you’ve been on wanted pos—”</p><p>“They just can’t get my nose right!”</p><p>Lance chuckled, at least.</p><p>“I am one stunt away from throttling you,” Eden growled. “Does that even matter?"</p><p>“Well, it’s easy for you to say,” Flynn pouted and crouched down to get a good look at hers. “You look amazing.”</p><p><em>That’s not a good thing,</em> she wanted to say, but horses whinnied nearby, catching their attention. Eden locked eyes with the Captain of the Guard, who towered above them on the rocky ledge and brandished his sword, summoning his men to go downhill. She cursed and they turned to run again, Flynn stuffing the wanted poster into his satchel with the stolen diadem.</p><p>Honestly, this stupid crown better have been worth all this trouble.</p><p>They ran into a dead end, a stony outcropping, and didn’t hesitate; Flynn stepped up onto Lance’s shoulders, they lifted Eden, and she quickly scaled up the rest of the ledge. She’d pulled Flynn up, and they both reached down to help Lance, but the horses’ hoofbeats shook the ground.</p><p>Lance shooed them off.</p><p>“Circle back,” Eden demanded, “we’ll catch up later.”</p><p>He nodded and took off, and Eden caught up to Flynn. When he heard her close behind, he took a sharp corner, and she copied. Though she hesitated to compliment the already big-headed pretty boy, he’d always been the best at thinking on the fly.</p><p>A furious <em>“Rider!”</em> shook the leaves.</p><p>Flynn gasped, turning another sharp corner, and the two thieves ran downhill, the royal guards close on their heels. Eden’s experience with horses was limited, mostly to setting them loose as a distraction, but they’d never thundered so loudly; however, it wasn’t loud enough to block out the Captain’s command.</p><p>“Retrieve that satchel at any cost!”</p><p>She cursed again, risking a glance over her shoulder; the satchel bounced at Flynn’s hip, and the guards were raising their crossbows.</p><p>“Eden, heads up!”</p><p>She looked ahead to a tree branch blocking the path. She hurtled above, he dove beneath: arrows pierced through the bark where their backs had been.</p><p>They ran again, trying to weave more randomly to avoid the arrows. The guards reloaded and fired at different rates, so there was never a safe moment.</p><p>The heist of the century, the biggest of her life. Her very brief life, apparently. She gritted her teeth. Could the royal family really not afford to commission a new crown? It had just been sitting there, so what was the big deal with this one?</p><p>Eden missed how Flynn swerved off the path, and her heart jumped in her throat. She hated being separated from either one of her brothers, but both?</p><p>She’ll keep going straight, if nothing else. He’d be able to find her. Flynn wouldn’t abandon her or Lance.</p><p>She swallowed. Not for long, at least.</p><p>The majority of the royal guard still followed her, not having switched paths in time. Hopefully, they’d see that she didn’t have the satchel, and would leave her; however, that was only if they were stupid. If they were smart…</p><p>She’d never been interrogated before, and she hoped she never would be.</p><p>Eden decided to switch paths, now running parallel to Flynn. She’d heard him shouting from this way, probably attracting more attention than he’d meant to, and she remembered her promise to throttle him.</p><p>Maybe later. Right now, she just wanted him to get away. She very well couldn’t kill him if some guard beat her to it.</p><p>She barely noticed when she reached the edge of a cliff, and she staggered to a stop on her tiptoes. Looking down (it’s steep, mostly rocks and moss) and side to side, she saw nothing, but she heard a horse (only one this time) and someone arguing with it.</p><p>Flynn came into view, riding on the Captain’s white horse as it tried to buck him off and grab the satchel at the same time.</p><p>Calling out would only distract him; Eden unsheathed her dagger from her boot and ran towards them, seeking an opening. In the scuffle, the satchel flew off, but the strap caught on the branch of a dead tree, sticking from the side of the cliff. She was about to shout for Flynn to hold back the horse while she retrieved it, but the two dolts lunged at the tree, pushing around one another’s heads, stomping at hands, and shimmying awkwardly along.</p><p>She was just about ready to scream in frustration.</p><p>Flynn triumphed with a “Ha!” before the branch creaked and finally gave under their weight.</p><p>“Rider!” Eden sheathed the dagger and knelt over the edge, bracing her hands against the ground.</p><p>The distressed shouting and neighing plummeted until the branch splintered against a rock, but thankfully, that didn’t silence them. The leaves rustled below, and she hoped it was enough to soften Flynn’s fall. She scampered down the cliff’s face, half-sliding and half-climbing, with her fingers catching grooves quickly enough to keep a safe pace. She touched down in a silent, mossy spot; Flynn was nowhere in sight, but the horse was sniffing at the ground like a dog on a scent.</p><p>Eden hesitated before following; the winding pace of the horse gave her enough time to carefully find her footholds, so she remained silent, timing her steps to the horse’s hooves. She followed as it snuffled around another ledge of rocks, (seriously, why was this forest half cliffs?) but held back; the horse, with its head to the ground, hadn’t seen him, but at her full height, Eden could see the top of a silky, brown head of hair behind a boulder. Flynn glanced over at her, a wide grin plastered on his face; she glowered back, withholding a smirk, as she watched the horse depart. Flynn stood, throwing the strap of the satchel over his shoulder as she walked up to join him.</p><p>He tried leaning against a foliage-covered boulder to rest but stumbled sideways, grunting in surprise. Eden brushed aside the curtain of vines and peered into the small alcove.</p><p>Was light coming through the other side?</p><p>The horse’s braying rang through the trees, and without another breath, the thieves dove into the alcove and pressed back against the stones. The vines stopped swaying just as the horse arrived, standing attentively outside. Its shadow hovered, looking this way and that as it sniffed the air; the foliage must have covered their scent, because it departed soon again.</p><p>Flynn took Eden’s arm, and the only reason why she didn’t immediately draw her knife was because she knew it was him. He pulled her towards the light on the other end of the alcove; water rushed outside, so there must have been a stream or something to follow to safety.</p><p>When they stepped into the open air, Flynn’s steps slowed as he stared at the beauty in front of them.</p><p>Surrounded by chittering birdsong and the scent of a sweet waterfall, a tower stood, unattached to any other structure. It was peculiar, with a roof as blue as the sky and stone walls the color of the surrounding cliffs, overgrown with greenery. The entire scene was so beautiful that Eden’s breathlessness wasn’t from running anymore.</p><p>She and Flynn had worked up a healthy sweat, but she couldn’t even smell themselves over the flowers and trees and shrubbery. This place had the freshest air she’d ever known.</p><p>Braying shook them from their thoughts. After a look over their shoulders and a shared glance, they wordlessly ran to the tower.</p>
<h2>*</h2><p>“There must be some way in,” Eden grumbled, circling the base of the building again. “No one builds a tower and doesn’t use it.”</p><p>Flynn stepped back and squinted up, shielding his eyes. “All I see is that window.”</p><p>She hadn’t missed it, either. From a certain angle, she could even see pots of pink and yellow flowers. They were well-maintained and carefully grown.</p><p>“Okay, fine. How was a window built there in the first place?”</p><p>He looked down at his boots, kicking at some discarded arrows on the ground. How those got there, Eden didn’t know, but when Flynn picked up two with thick sticks, she glared at him.</p><p>“Yeah, no. I’m not climbing up there like that.”</p><p>“Relax, Eden, I’ll head up first,” he said, swaggering with a practiced, roguish charm. She crossed her arms. “If it’s all clear up there, I’ll shout down for you.”</p><p>That could give her enough time to rest.</p><p> “This tower is about…” she put a hand on one of the stones, measuring, “six or seven stories high. You’ll break your neck.”</p><p>He hadn’t been listening, already digging the arrowheads into the mortar to climb.</p><p>“Fine then, I’ll keep looking for the real entrance!”</p>
<h2>*</h2><p>It had been an hour since Flynn had climbed through the window.</p><p>Maybe half an hour.</p><p>Okay, fifteen minutes. Eden had paced the tower twice more, running her hands across every surface. There was an area that had been bricked up, but it was so dusty it had almost sealed shut. Considering the flowers in the window, someone lived there, which meant that they or someone else had to go in and out on a regular basis for food, clean water, and other necessities.</p><p>She groaned, kicking at a clump of grass. After finishing that second rotation, she’d waited, listening closely for Flynn to call down. Maybe he already had, but he’d been too far away for her to hear, and maybe she’d been at the back of the building when he’d leaned out the window, and he thought she’d gone.</p><p>There were too many maybes.</p><p>Now she sat at the back of the tower, where no one would see her if they walked in through the caves. She was too patient for her own tastes, but she’d wait until sunset, if necessary. That was always the plan: stay at a prearranged meeting place until nightfall, (this time the Snuggly Duckling,) after which whoever was left would pick themselves up and move along.</p><p>Eden had never thought that the plan would have to be followed to that last point.</p><p>She sighed silently, trying to stay alert, but everything made her pleasantly drowsy, from the smells of the air to the birdsong to the footsteps in the grass—</p><p>Eden froze.</p><p>“Rapunzel!” A woman sang out. “Let down your hair!”</p><p>Well,<em> that </em>made her stiffen too, but more out of confusion than anything else.</p><p>She wanted to look around the corner and see who it was, but her gut instinct restrained her. Instead, Eden waited, listening as the woman blithely yelled up to the top of the tower, her voice growing distant from…above?</p><p>If Eden moved to look now, there was no way the woman wouldn’t see her from a higher vantage point. She thought of the guards, only minutes earlier, where they’d seen their posters.  Hoping that Flynn had hidden himself somewhere, she stayed where she was.</p>
<h2>*</h2><p> It felt like the woman spent ages up there, but even after Eden heard her leave, she waited another five minutes to be sure she was gone before looking over the glen.</p><p>Nothing moved but the plants in the faint breeze.</p><p>She couldn’t wait anymore. Eden jumped to her feet, plucking two arrows from the ground as she went to the front of the tower. After a deep breath, she drove the arrowhead into the mortar, just as Flynn had done. It had taken Flynn just over three minutes to scale the building, but by the time she reached the top, five minutes had passed. Her arms ached as she pulled herself onto the window ledge and looked backwards to the alcove.</p><p>No one, not the woman, the guards, or even that weird horse, had entered the glen. Eden rolled her shoulders—had it really taken her over five minutes to scale the building? She’d never live this down, if Flynn or Lance heard. Sweeping her legs around, she touched down on the stone floor of the tower, keeping one arrowhead clenched in her fist.</p><p>“Sorry, Rider, but I got bored,” she stated casually, stepping out of the blinding sunlight, “so can you tell me…”</p><p>Her brother-in-crime had been tied to a green chair, which had tipped over in the middle of the floor, leaving his pretty little face crushed against the ground. A girl stood on the mantle above, barefooted, pointing at an abstract painting on the wall with a frying pan and the commanding nature of a lecturer. Her blonde hair was so long it draped to the floor, disappearing and reappearing in the shadowed bits of the room, leading to…was <em>that</em> what his restraints were?</p><p>The most normal-looking thing here was the boy who was so petite that the crossbow he aimed at Eden’s head was nearly half his size; at least now she knew where the arrows may have come from. He wore thick gloves, even though he was barefooted like the girl, and his midnight-black hair had a streak of blue.</p><p>But the room was silent, as if she was the weird one. Eden was so confused that she didn’t even think to draw her knife to cut Flynn free.</p><p>She pursed her lips, hoping that masked her confusion. “Explain.”</p><p>“Well,” he grunted as he rocked the chair onto its side, still facing the painting. “Blondie and Hair-Stripe here have offered me the <em>fantastic</em> opportunity of escorting them and their pet frog to Corona to watch the lanterns, and until I agree to take them, they are holding the satchel hostage.”</p><p>Eden arched her brow, glancing between the three figures. The girl was just far enough away that she couldn’t see her clearly, but she looked like she’d never threatened anyone or anything in her life. Her eyes were big and round, making her look younger than she probably was.</p><p>They would <em>not </em>return to Corona: she’d heard about their prison system and didn’t want to risk it.</p><p>“So agree?” <em>And then we can ditch them somewhere.</em></p><p>“And you don’t get the satchel back until he returns us home safely.”</p><p>Eden gaped; Hair-Stripe's voice was deeper than she’d expected, and even though it trembled, he looked serious. His eyes were a shockingly pale blue-grey, matching that weird streak, and they almost glowed from the shadows where he stood. Perhaps she was wrong, thinking that he was the most normal of these two.</p><p>She said nothing, staring down the length of the arrow in her face to the boy’s glare, then along the path of hair leading from the chair to the girl.</p><p>“Rider,” she said slowly. “How are we going to explain this to Lance?”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>re. "Eden Sparrow:" I knew that Eden had to be her first name, not only because of Eden Espinosa, but also because it would fit the naming conventions for Flynn Rider and Lance Strongbow with the right surname.<br/>My first instinct was for her to be Eden Starling, but then I'd be ripping Barbie's Christmas Carol (hilarious, but ill-suited.)<br/>I did like the bird theme, though; birds are a pretty big motif in the show, so I chose Sparrow, because the coloring is fairly similar to Cass's bird form in Freebird.</p><p>Guys, the more I think about it, the more I don't want to continue this. It'd require a sequel, which I just don't have energy for. I have one more scene written, but no more than that.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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